ABSTRACT
Linguistic anthropologists study how language use both presupposes and creates social relations in cultural context (Agha 2007, Duranti 1997, Silverstein 1976). Linguistic anthropological approaches are concerned with four interrelated aspects of language use: linguistic form, language use in interaction, ideologies of language, and the social world and the social domains across which sociolinguistic regularities move. This chapter will describe the field and review linguistic anthropological work of potential use to English language studies. Bringing together theories and tools from ethnography, anthropology, semiotics and linguistics, linguistic anthropology contributes to English language studies by offering tools to understand English language use in social context — both aspects common to all languages and aspects more unique to English. These unique aspects emerge from the contexts of its use, in colonial/postcolonial situations, in processes of globalization and in political economies. Much linguistic anthropological work does not focus on English in particular, but the field’s focus on form, use, ideologies and domains offers productive ways of analysing English as a global language and a language of power.
